As part of President Obama’s plan to rebuild the grass-roots movement that propelled him to the White House, he took to YouTube this week to urge his 19.3 million Facebook friends to join him, and invite others, for a town-hall-style chat on Facebook Wednesday with Mark Zuckerberg, the social media site’s chief executive, at his side.

◼ By Tuesday afternoon, more than 22,000 people had signed up. NY Times

It is all part of Mr. Obama’s re-election effort to use social media and other online tools to galvanize supporters. But unlike in the last presidential campaign, Republicans are better prepared to compete online in the 2012 contest.

“The notion that the Internet was owned by liberals, owned by the left in the wake of the Obama victory, has been proven false,” said Patrick Ruffini, a Republican political online strategist...

Republican voters matched Democrats in their use of these tools, with 40 percent of Republican online users turning to social media to get politically involved in a campaign, compared to 38 percent of Democratic voters, according to a study by the Pew Research Center for the Internet and Society. Tea Party supporters were especially likely to use social media to connect with a political group or candidate.

“It is not necessarily that Democrats or young people or liberals have become less active,” said Aaron Smith, the author of the study. “It is more that older adults, conservative voters and Tea Party activists have come to join the party.”

Drudge headline is: 4/20: Less than 1% of 'friends' sign up for Obama FACEBOOK event...

◼ 'unlike' Obama - Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Obama answered just eight questions during Wednesday's hour-long session at Facebook's secondary headquarters building in Palo Alto, an event that was streamed on the Facebook Live video page.

But some of those questions came from Facebook employees who won a company lottery for the chance to sit in the live audience. That left hundreds of questions posted on the event's Facebook wall unanswered.